


p-a-n-d-e-m-o-n-i-u-m

by somethingdifferent



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ben is 21, College, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, FORMER SPELLING BEE RIVALS MEET AND FUCK, Loss of Virginity, POV Alternating, Rey is 18, Underage Drinking, Virgin Ben Solo, Virgin Rey (Star Wars), ben is her RA, that's the whole plot, they're awkward horny nerds thats the whole fic, very mild e2l tho lol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:47:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24399001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingdifferent/pseuds/somethingdifferent
Summary: Because the second he sees her—the girl who beat his grandfather’s record as the youngest person ever to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee at the age of eleven years, three months, the girl who ruined his dreams of winning a competition he wasted his entire childhood training for, the cymotrichous girl—with her stupid little smiley face on her name tag and her stupid little freckles and her stupid perfect face, Ben’s entire day, his entire semester, his entire life, is ruined just the way it was seven years ago, with the sound of a sibilant s hanging in the air between them. C-Y-M-O-T-R-I-C-H-O-U-S.From the Greek.Former spelling bee rivals Rey Palpatine and Ben Solo meet again at Takodana University. It goes about as well as anyone would expect.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 106
Kudos: 444





	1. God hates losers

**Author's Note:**

> look, there is no reason for this fic. i know it, you all know it. let's just enjoy the ride!
> 
> all titles cards taken from lyrics from the 25th annual putnam county spelling bee (the musical!) because i'm NOTHING if not consistent
> 
> also psst follow me on [ twitter ](https://twitter.com/janedazey) :)

**1\. God hates losers**

Benjamin Organa-Solo lost the Scripps National Spelling Bee the summer after he finished the eighth grade, the last year he was eligible for competition. He was fourteen years old—already taller and broader than any of his classmates, but his voice still cracking embarrassingly every time he felt even the slightest bit of any kind of emotion. 

The word that resulted in his elimination was  _ cymotrichous _ . From the Greek: κύμα meaning  _ wave _ , and θριξ, meaning  _ hair _ , capped with  _ -ous _ , the English adjectival suffix used to denote possession. Quite simply: “having wavy hair.”

He lost the Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C., at three in the afternoon in June. It was 2010: two years before the Mayans supposedly decided the world would end. It didn’t, obviously, though there were plenty of times after that day that he wished it would. Ben lost in the final round, on a word he knew (he knew it, knew that  _ fucking _ word), and in that moment his fate—to never live up to his mother’s expectations, his uncle’s tutelage, his grandfather’s legacy—was irrevocably sealed.

(Irrevocable: from the Latin  _ voco _ —voice— _ vocare _ —the infinitive form. To call. Tacked on: the English prefix  _ ir- _ , meaning  _ not _ . “Unable to be called back.” Ben took nine long years of Latin classes. Football? Too dangerous. Swimming? Too time-consuming. Chess? Too mentally taxing.

But Latin class, on Saturday morning? Of fucking course.)

(Ben fucking  _ hates _ Latin.)

The last word of the day was Greek. His eyes hurt, and his legs were sore from standing and from tension, and his vision was starting to blur because no one had realized it yet but he needed glasses desperately. Ben lost after making it through twenty-three championship rounds, on a word he’d fucking studied, in a language he knew well. He lost, and he was never going to have another chance to try again.

And it was all  _ Rey Palpatine’s _ fault.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_ Here’s why you should love me, America _

Takodana University wasn’t her first choice, by any stretch of the imagination. It wasn’t her second choice either, or her third. In point of fact, it was her fourth. Her  _ distant _ fourth.

When she was accepted last spring, after a string of rejections and wait-lists from every other Ivy, Grandfather didn’t even attempt to hide his disappointment.

_ All those APs, all the SAT and ACT tutoring, all the college essay writing classes, the Greek and the Latin and the French and the Mandarin and for what? For the ninth most prestigious university in America? _

_ How disappointing. _

But: here she is anyway. At Takodana University, with its nine-point-eight percent acceptance rate, with its not-quite-as-impressive Classics department, in Kenobi College, the dorm building where she will be spending her freshman year, in a suite with Rose Tico and Kaydel Ko Connix and Jannah Calrissian.

And she is just having the worst fucking time.

Because there are certain things she can get over. Like how, despite Grandfather calling the Dean of Student Life, Rey has not been given a single, as she requested. No, Amilyn Holdo told him, it’s important for freshman to experience college life with same-age peers. Learn how to live with roommates. Be  _ sociable _ . Put herself out there.

As if she can’t do that while living alone. 

And there’s other things, too, that she can get over. Like Rose’s already slovenly living habits—Rey has been very good about not pointing out that they’ve only been moved in for six hours, and Rose’s things are clearly spilling over onto Rey’s side of the room, and she’s already left three dirty dishes in the sink. Whatever. Who cares.

Not her.  _ Clearly _ .

Also, she can move past the fact that she was put in Kenobi College, even though she’d specifically written in her application essay how much she would, if accepted, want to live in Grievous College, where Senator Tarkin spent  _ his _ freshman year. She thought for sure she’d at least get that—Tarkin is an old friend of Grandfather’s, after all, and Rey thought perhaps Grandfather might be amenable to pulling some strings for his only living relative. But apparently not.

All of that, she can get over.

Honestly. Genuinely. In truth.

But the thing that is ruining her day, and therefore will inevitably ruin her first semester, and then her entire academic career, and then her employment opportunities beyond Takodana when she finally gets out of this hellhole? Is the fact that it’s not even three o’clock on her first day of college, and her resident advisor already hates her.

For the first half of their little floor-wide icebreaker meet-and-greet bitch session, Rey cannot for the life of her figure out why. She is unerringly polite. She makes stilted small talk with her new roommates; oh, wow, she has never heard of that band, oh, yes, volunteering in rural Appalachia does sound like an interesting way to spend your summer. She eats two brownie squares from the folding table buffet of depressing and heartbreakingly earnest baked goods, because Grandfather has always told her it’s impolite to turn down food when it is offered.  _ A little compromise goes a long way _ , he told her.  _ Give a little something, and you can take so much in return _ . She even puts a little smiley face in sharpie on her  _ HELLO MY NAME IS _ name tag, because the other women in Kenobi College are, apparently,  _ children _ , who added doodles and stars and cute little bubbles on their name tags, dotting their eyes with twee little hearts. But Rey puts the smiley face there anyway, because it seems to be the thing to do—god, how she wishes she’d done more to get off the Harvard wait-list, but there’s nothing to be done for it now; her damn pride—so that her name tag reads  _ HELLO MY NAME IS  _ **_Rey Palpatine :)_ ** .

She tries to be good.

She really, really tries to be good.

And she almost entirely is.

Almost.

And then: the RA.

The resident advisor of the first two floors of her new dorm, who is making the rounds as the freshman engage each other in relationship-building conversation, is...attractive. Subjectively speaking, of course. He has features one might charitably describe as exotic: aquiline nose, full mouth, high cheekbones. Interesting. She hates using such a broad, common word, but it’s the truth. His body, on the other hand, is more objectively appealing: tall, broad, and visibly muscled, even underneath his long-sleeved shirt, the buttons of which are straining against his chest. Big hands, thick fingers, wide shoulders. Her heartbeat quickens just looking at him. Her face goes hot, and she looks away hurriedly, before he can catch her staring.

A few minutes later, she can’t resist glancing at him again. Just to be pleasant, she assures herself. Just to be sociable. She looks just to find that he is already staring back at her.

The second he realizes she’s looking back at him, she can actually see the loathing overtake his previously placid expression. Pure, unadulterated hatred lights in his warm brown eyes, hidden by wire-frame glasses and a mop of dark, unruly hair.

Rey can practically feel her face fall. Her stomach twist itself into a knot.

She hasn’t even  _ done _ anything yet. He doesn’t even know her yet, and he already finds her lacking.

Rey straightens her back and meets his gaze as steadily as she can. Trying her best to convey: you don’t frighten me. You aren’t better than me.

_ Stand up straight _ , Grandfather says,  _ and know you are the smartest person in the room _ .

And she is the smartest person in the room.

So  _ fuck _ that guy, she thinks, violently and righteously furious. Fuck. Him.

“Okay,” the new RA says once idle conversation among the new residents has tapered off into nothing. He turns his head and makes eye contact with almost everyone in the room—deliberately, almost like someone coached him how to connect to people. Rey should know; she was taught the same thing.

He looks at everyone but her and then shrugs his massive shoulders. “Let’s do some icebreakers, I guess.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_ Life is random and unfair _

Ben has no idea why he let Poe rope him into this.

Just be an RA with me, he said. It’ll be fun, he said.

“Have you seen the singles they give the RAs in Grievous College? At  _ Kenobi _ ?” he had said at the end of their sophomore year, in the midst of a dissertation-length bullet pointed monologue on why Ben should join Poe in spending his junior year in a freshman dorm. “You can actually see the floor. The beds are fulls.  _ Fulls _ , Ben.”

Ben had spent the better part of two years of his life attempting to squeeze his oversized frame into the rickety twin beds of various other living situations on Takodana’s campus. It was that, and Poe’s promise that he would owe Ben one forever, in perpetuity, ad infinitum, that finally convinced him to apply for a position as a resident advisor in Kenobi College.

So far, on day one, he is already regretting that decision. Because, so far, it is already decidedly  _ not _ fun. It is, in point of fact, the  _ exact opposite _ of fun.

Because the second he sees her—the girl who beat his grandfather’s record as the youngest person ever to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee at the age of eleven years, three months, the girl who ruined his dreams of winning a competition he wasted his entire childhood training for, the  _ cymotrichous _ girl—with her stupid little smiley face on her name tag and her stupid little freckles and her stupid perfect face, Ben’s entire day, his entire semester, his entire  _ life _ , is ruined just the way it was seven years ago, with the sound of a sibilant  _ s _ hanging in the air between them.  _ C-Y-M-O-T-R-I-C-H-O-U-S _ .

From the Greek.

He takes one look at her, standing next to a girl who had already introduced herself to him as  _ Kaydel, Kaydel Ko Connix, but he can call her Kay! _ and almost walks right out of the room.

She doesn’t notice him at first. She’s distracted, nodding seriously as Kaydel talks with her hands. Ben thinks he might have recognized her anyway, even without the name tag. There’s just something about how she holds herself that’s the same as it was when they were kids. Chin tilted up like a challenge, eyes cool and searching for a sign of weakness.

_ Your eye twitches _ , she told him during a break in the second oral round.  _ When you’re fumbling for the right letter. You should work on that _ .

He can feel his eye twitching now.

There’s other things about her, too. Other details that scratch at some long-forgotten part of his memory, trying to connect the girl he met in Washington with the young woman he’s seeing now, here, in his dorm, his university, his territory. The barest hint of dimples in her cheeks, no longer rounded with persistent, childish baby fat. Long, lean legs hidden under wide-legged matronly shorts, a polo she’s buttoned all the way up to the neck, and nurse-white Keds. The curve of her waist. Her green-flecked eyes. Button nose. Smattering of freckles. Her mouth.

God, her  _ mouth _ .

He’s still gawking at her (what a word:  _ gawking _ ; it’s the only one that fits) when she turns her head and notices him standing there, next to the plate of charcuterie he bought at Whole Foods with the Head of Kenobi College’s work credit card.

She meets his eye and smiles the tiniest, most pathetic looking smile.

_ Fuck _ .

His face feels like it’s burning. Aflame. His mouth turns down and harsh, his eyebrows knit together, and his hands curl into fists.  _ Your eye twitches; you should work on that. _

He has thirty-odd new freshman in the same room as him, expecting him to do something other than run out of the room screaming with rage and disbelief.

So he tears his gaze away and decides firmly that he will just pretend like she doesn’t exist.

Besides, he thinks bitterly, she probably won’t even remember him anyway.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_ I don’t like to brag, and I won’t ‘cause I don’t have to _

She remembers him. Benjamin Organa-Solo.

It takes her a frankly embarrassing amount of time to figure it out.

The evidence is all there, right in front of her face. His name tag, which just reads  _ BEN _ in flowing cursive script; his nose, which Grandfather once referred to as  _ The Great Wall _ , as in: visible from outer space; his satellite dish ears. God, even his height is a dead giveaway—he was always tall, towering over every other kid onstage. The times she’d gone back over the tape of their championship round, she was always struck by how  _ little _ her eleven-year-old self looked next to him.

Not that it mattered, in the end. She wiped the floor with him anyway.

But even with all that evidence, Rey still doesn’t figure it out at first. Ben leads them through three different icebreakers before she realizes who he is. And then, just before their meet-and-greet is over, she recognizes him at last.

It’s the last thing they’re going to do before he lets them go, he tells them. Something simple, he says.

Two truths and a lie.

“I‘ll go first,” he says, clearing his throat and shoving the bridge of his glasses further up his nose. He does that thing again, where he makes eye contact with everyone but her, and Rey is just—just fucking  _ sick _ of it.

_ Language _ , she can imagine Grandfather saying.  _ You’re supposed to be this bright young lady, and yet here you are, slouching and whining and cussing. What good did all your education do if you can’t find a better word to use than ‘fucking?’ _

_ So much like your mother. _

Rey narrows her eyes. She straightens her spine. She does her level best to burn a hole in the center of his forehead with the strength of her glare.

He still doesn’t look over.

“I am six-two,” he starts. “I’m named after Ben Kenobi, who founded Kenobi College, and I’m majoring in English.”

They all make their guesses, and Rey stays silent. Eventually, the lie is revealed: he is six-three.

Surprise, surprise.

Kaydel, her suitemate, almost visibly swoons. Rey feels the distinct urge to roll her eyes, but she gathers up the last stubborn remnants of her patience and instead just ignores her.

And then, he says, it’s their turn.

Sitting in the circle in the common area of the first floors of Kenobi College, Rey listens to the new freshman at Takodana University dole out silly, trivial facts about their mediocre lives. She keeps her expression empty, just the way she was always taught. She shows neither enthusiasm nor disdain. Just flat, even, steady neutrality.

Rose has an older sister named Paige. Jannah knows how to fly planes. Kaydel Ko Connix saw Taylor Swift in concert last year and, not coincidentally, is the silliest little nitwit Rey has ever had the misfortune to breathe the same air as.

All perfectly ordinary things.

Then, at last, it’s her turn.

She stands up from her dinky black folding chair and squares her shoulders. She breathes from her diaphragm and declares with purpose, “My two truths and a lie are: I skipped the first grade, I am undeclared, and I won the National Spelling Bee when I was eleven.”

They’re the same three facts she’s used for every single two truths and a lie, with the minor college variation for her lie. Ordinarily, she might say something about being fluent in three languages when it’s really four, but she thought that might be perceived as a tad bit boastful. Besides, it’s a good way to bring up her actual major: Classics, with an additional concentration on pre-law.

The others make their guesses. 

“There’s no way you won the actual  National Spelling Bee,” one girl says snidely, in the middle of a group-wide discussion over what might be more likely to be false, the first grade thing or the bee. “Why would you brag about that?”

Then, across the circle, Kaydel gasps with as much melodrama as one might reasonably be able to muster.

“She did,” she says excitedly, waving her phone in the air. “Rey Palpatine. There’s articles about her and  _ everything _ .”

The room explodes. Questions are tossed at her—what did she do with the money, who on earth actually competes in spelling bees, why isn’t she at Harvard right now—but Rey barely hears any of them.

Because Ben, the resident advisor, went suddenly, noticeably quiet when she told her second truth. When Rey has finished answering all of the questions, basking in the attention, her eyes dart to meet his, almost entirely on accident.

Or maybe it’s not.

Maybe she just wants to see what he thinks of her now that he knows about her. How incandescently brilliant she is.

And then, at the very moment he meets her gaze, a muscle under his left eye twitches.

And she knows.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_ The best spellers don’t necessarily win _

He needs to get out. He needs to be away from this. From her.

Rey Palpatine.

God damn it.

He dismisses them all to go back to their suites so quickly that poor Rose Tico actually asks him on his way out if any of them did something wrong.

“No.” He keeps looking over his shoulder for Rey, like she is a poltergeist that might burst out of the walls at any possible moment. “No, I just remembered I have a meeting across campus.”

Her face falls. “On the first day?”

“Yes,” he says, lying through his teeth. “So. Yeah. Gotta run!”

And then he does just that.

Runs.

Out of the building.

At a  _ sprint _ .

But it’s not enough. It’s never enough, when it comes to her.

_ My grandfather says your knees are locked. You should really work on that. _

Rey Palpatine catches up with him when he’s only managed to make it halfway across the lawn in front of Kenobi, just in front of the statue of the school’s founders, Revan and Shan. He can hear her struggling to catch up behind him, but it isn’t until she calls out, “Benjamin,” that he actually stops his hasty progress.

He screws his eyes shut. His jaw tenses.

As soon as he saw her little smiley face name tag, he knew this was going to happen. His name is on the door to his god damn room, so it’s not like he could have avoided her forever. This forever. 

Even if maybe, in the deepest, most idiotic part of his consciousness, he had hoped he might be able to.

Ben turns around slowly, wishing that by the time he faces her, she’ll be gone.

No such luck.

Rey stares at him with something in her expression that looks almost, absurdly, like...wonder. She takes a step forward, and he automatically takes one back. And winces when her expression falters.

“Benjamin Organa-Solo,” she says. Her hands twist together for a moment before she flexes her fingers wide and forces her arms down at her sides. “It’s you.”

“It is,” he says gruffly. When she only continues to stare at him, his eyes harden. “What?” he snaps.

This time, she steps back first.  _ Good _ , he thinks viciously. “Excuse me?”

“What do you  _ want _ ?”

She brings herself up to her full height, and even then she’s still so small. Thin and willowy. Her long legs, the glimpse of her throat he can see behind her neatly fastened buttons, and oh god, what the  _ fuck _ ?

“We know each other,” she says, and he barks out a short, sharp laugh of derision.

“No,” he says flatly. “We don’t.”

Rey opens her mouth and then closes it again. “You—” she starts, but the sentence is cut short by Poe, bounding down the steps behind the statue.

“Solo,” he shouts happily, “buddy! How was your first day of resident advising?”

Ben tears his eyes away from her in a manner that edges too close to reluctance. He offers Poe a weak smile. “Fine.”

As he gets closer, Poe finally seems to notice the tense atmosphere he just stumbled into. He leans into Ben and stage whispers, “Am I interrupting something?”

“No,” Ben says, loud over Rey’s protest of, “Yes, actually, Benjamin and I were just—”

“Just nothing,” he cuts her off. “Just nothing.”

Poe raises an eyebrow. “Benjamin?” he repeats skeptically.

Ben frowns. Hands tighten into fists. Still, his mother raised him to be somewhat polite.

He looks back to Rey, his eyes lowered to somewhere around her knees as he tells her, “It was very nice to meet you and the rest of the freshman today.”

“What—”

“If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.”

Rey glares at him. Her arms fold across her chest.

She looks so much like the cutthroat little spelling assassin he met seven years ago it almost takes his breath away.

“Fine,” she says, the word ground out through her teeth. “I will, Benjamin.”

She turns to walk away, right when Poe asks, “Who’s that?”

And Ben, before he can think better on it, replies harshly, “ _ Nobody _ . She’s fucking nobody.”

And that’s, apparently, what does it.

Rey whirls around, her hands closed into fists at her side, knocking against the stiff pleats of her khakis.

“See,” she yells.

Ben looks up at her face, finally, his knuckles going white around the strap of his backpack. “What?”

“See,” she repeats. She looks so different like this. So much the same. “Why.”

“What?”

“M,” she goes on.

Suddenly, he understands. He can feel his face drain of color.

“A—no, wait. Can I start over? I—I didn’t mean to—can I start over?” She imitates the gulp he remembers so clearly. Swallowing around the lump in his throat. His knees locked. Vision blurring. Cameras and eyes riveted on his failure. Unable to alter the sequence of letters first uttered, a rule he’d known since he was six. “C-Y-M-O-T-R-I-C-H-O-U-S. Cymotrichous.”

Ben sees red.

_ Fuck _ her. Fuck her ugly clothes and her adorable dimples and her perfect freckles and her stupid pretty face.

He strides toward her, closer and closer still, until there’s less than a foot of space between them.

“K-N-A-I-D-E-L.” He enunciates every single letter. Breathes from his diaphragm. Bends his fucking knees and repeats the word that put her down in spelling bee history. “Knaidel.” Rey stares back at him, her face set in stone. A muscle in her jaw jumps. Her eyes light in fury. “Congratulations, Rey Palpatine,” he continues, voice low and cold. “You won. I lost. Harvard will be so thrilled to have you.” He pretends to think on this for a moment, like he just realized: “Oh, wait—we ended up at the same school anyway.”

At that, Rey blinks hard. Her lower lip trembles. Suddenly, he feels a flood of guilt that almost overwhelms him.

Then, in the next moment, it’s gone.

“You’re a fucking loser, Benjamin,” she spits out. He can see her flinch as she says it. The barest little flicker of pain. “Just like you always were.”

She turns on her heel, those bleach white Keds flashing like a warning light, and walks away before he can say another word.

Poe looks back and forth between Ben and the girl growing smaller and smaller in the distance. His dark eyebrows tilt together, twin wings of confusion. 

“What the fuck was that?” he asks.

Ben just forces himself to shrug, disaffected and blithe. “Someone I knew in middle school,” he says. An obvious understatement, but Poe doesn’t push it.

He joins Ben in watching her walk away. Her cropped, chestnut hair loose around her eyes, her arms swinging with too much control at her sides. “She’s hot,” he muses. “For a dweeb.”

Ben snorts. “Yeah, okay.”

“You should hit that.”

“Please, stop.”

Poe raises his hands in mock surrender. “Just saying.”

Ben rolls his eyes, but he doesn't look away from her just yet.

He will in a minute anyway, he's sure.

Any minute now.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. Be smart! Be cool! Be an adult! Be remarkably adroit in social situations!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic is back, babydoll
> 
> hopefully you will be able to read this chapter without having to go back and reread chapter 1, but if not, here is a quick recap:
> 
> rey beat ben at the scripps national spelling bee. they meet again at college where he is the RA for her dorm (kenobi college). rey shares a room with rose and a suite with kaydel and jannah (who are roommates with each other). at the end of chapter 1, rey confronts ben about who he is and spells the word he lost on at him just to be a little bitch about it. poe witnessed this but he does not know rey's name or who she really is. okay whew hopefully that's everything you need to know right now.
> 
> my goal for this fic, now that i'm back on it, is to update every two weeks or so. hopefully! u can follow me on twitter 2 find out if i will make this deadline :) @janedazey
> 
> and now, onto chapter 2:

**2\. Be smart! Be cool! Be an adult! Be remarkably adroit in social situations!**

The day Rey won the Scripps National Spelling Bee was the greatest day of her life.

It was 2010. In June, at three in the afternoon, on the twenty-fourth championship round. Her opponent—her _enemy,_ Grandfather said, voice chilly and hard the way it got sometimes, when he really wanted her to focus—was a gangly, mole-riddled fourteen-year-old _dork._

Past his prime. It was sad, really.

Rey had done her research; Rey always did her research. Benjamin Organa-Solo: legacy grandchild of former record-winning speller Anakin Skywalker, the son of Senator Organa and the famous pilot, Han Solo. It was his third time in D.C., and he had not one win under his belt. In fact, up on the stage with Rey was his first time making it as far as the final two.

His last chance.

When she won—when she called out the letters to the last word of the day _K-N-A-I-D-E-L,_ and the confetti burst out around her head, and the audience cheered in approval just for her, _just for her—_ Rey walked across the stage to the boy she beat and shook his hand firmly.

She grinned wildly, her whole body in shivers. He stared back at her, blank-faced and cold. His hand was limp in hers.

She wondered if she should say something to him _—nice work, good spelling, you’re very tall, how did you get to be so tall—_ but before she could decide he was turning around, walking off the stage too fast for her to catch, his shoulders hunched up around his ears.

It didn’t matter. Rey turned and beamed when the host approached to give her the trophy, helping her to hoist it above her head. The clapping and roaring from the audience barely even touched her as she blinked the tears of happiness away and searched the crowd wildly for the person who put her on this very stage, who made her the winner he always knew she would be.

Grandfather was sitting in the very first row. He didn’t look all that different from usual; his expression was even save for his mouth, which twitched up at the corners as he nodded at her, his most enthusiastic gesture of approval. 

In that moment, Rey’s heart swelled.

He never looked so proud of her before.

Or since.

(It is not an easy thing: to realize that you’ve peaked at the age of eleven.)

_It breaks my heart I’m not that smart_

After that first day, Ben forgets all about Rey Palpatine.

Mostly.

Kind of.

Sometimes.

He has things to do, after all. Classes to attend. Papers to write. Residents to advise. Rey Palpatine is very low on his totem pole of priorities, so. And he has no reason to think about her, so.

So _whatever._

At the end of the second week of the semester, his mother calls.

Sitting at the desk in his room, his laptop opened to the essay he has due in four days, Ben considers, for a brief moment, letting it ring through to voicemail. Instead, he sighs, shoves his glasses up to rub his eye, and answers the phone.

Leia’s voice is firm, no-nonsense. She rasps, the sound crinkled with static, “How are your classes going?”

His mouth tightens into a thin line. “Hello to you, too, Mom. I’m doing great.”

A sigh crackles through the phone. “Hello, Benji,” she rattles off, “I’m glad you’re well. Now can I ask how your classes are going?”

His gaze tracks to the ceiling. With his glasses tucked into his hair, Ben feels blurry, half-asleep. Caught off his feet. “My classes are fine. My dorm is fine. Everything is fine.”

“Well, _excuse me_ ,” she huffs, “for wanting to check on my _only son_ —”

“Mom,” he interrupts, “you don’t need to get offended. I’m just…” he looks down, eyes trailing over the two sentences he has written for his essay on Magical Realism, “busy. That’s all. With my work, and you know Poe roped me into... _resident advising_ —”

“Oh, right!” She audibly brightens at the mention of his friend. Ben’s jaw ticks as he struggles to tamp down the irrational flare of jealousy bursting through his chest. “How is that going, honey?”

“The advising?” He clears his throat, straightening too quickly as he pushes his glasses back into place. His computer chair swivels in place with his sudden change in posture, dragging the toe of his slipper in a rough slide along the hardwood floor. An image claws to the forefront of his mind, a pretty mouth twisting in rage, a scattering of freckles, the ballerina-perfect turn of white tennis shoes, long, tan legs scissoring smoothly under heinous khakis. His voice is pitched just a smidge too high. “That’s fine, too.”

On the other end, his mother is quiet for a long moment. Finally, she mutters, “Alright, Benji. Well, that all sounds good, then.”

“Yeah.” He huffs out a breath, frowning slightly, and concentrates very carefully on the _Galaxy Wars_ poster hanging by the window, the only decor he's put up thus far. He should find other things to put up, he chastises himself. What girl would want to spend time in this room? “Yeah, it is. All good.”

Ben makes his excuses, citing the non-existent mountains of work he has to get done today, and hangs up before he ends up blurting out something about the reappearance of his childhood nemesis.

His phone is tossed on his bed, his fingers return to his laptop keyboard. They twitch, hovering over the letters.

The image of _her_ flashes through his brain.

Little Rey Palpatine. Not so little anymore: her eyes radiant and furious and filled with righteous anger. The devastating cut of her waist in even the most unflattering apparel. Mouth turned down, bobbed haircut swishing around her chin. He’s seen her on campus in the days since that horrible first one, walking to and from her classes like something is chasing her.

She doesn’t have any friends, as far as he can tell. Not a one.

 _Good,_ he thinks a little viciously.

Ben banishes the thought of her from his mind. He hammers out another sentence in a quick but brutal flurry of motivation before he realizes the essay is a lost cause for at least the rest of the afternoon. Instead, he goes to the student market and buys three Monster Energies that will be consumed within the next twenty-four hours.

He doesn’t think about Rey again.

Ben chooses to ignore the fact that this is untrue. Erroneous. Fallacious.

Fallacious.

F-A-L-L-A-C-I-O-U-S.

From the Latin.

_The words in the dictionary are the friends that I’ll have forever_

The music is far too loud. Rose Tico is, historically, too loud: she likes to _chatter_ , about everything and anything. She barrels through the door to their double every afternoon after her classes, narrating every trifling little nothing from her life. The vending machine in the lobby is broken and she couldn’t get her Famous Amos so now the rest of her night is, like, ruined; Professor Ackbar is a jowly old coot and she doesn’t believe in his 10 percent participation grade; her big sister, Paige, said she could, like, _maybe_ get Rose a handle of Fireball (with the glossed-over caveat that they pay her twice the actual cost). Rey ignores these mundane inanities as much as she can; it stops her roommate not at all.

College is unchallenging. Rey knew it would be, particularly at an Ivy League wannabe like Takodana, but it is still a moderate disappointment to have her and Grandfather’s suspicions confirmed.

Tonight the volume is egregious. The other girls from the suite are doing something they refer to as “pre-gaming” in the common area. An execrable tune is blaring through the wall—against which sits Rey’s desk, her Fagles translation of _The Oresteia_ unfolded between her elbows. Her hands rest flat against the wood, the joints of her fingers aching to bend into a clenched fists. Piqued, incensed at the headache brewing behind her eyelids, her nose scrunches up at the sound of another burst of shrieking laughter, the noise mixing in with the abominable lyrics of the singer. _3, 6, 9, damn she fine_ ? What kind of grammatical disaster are these purportedly intelligent women subjecting themselves to? And how the fuck is she supposed to get any god damn _work_ done around here? She can feel her brain cells evaporating by the second, and not one iota (both literal and figurative) of work has been done since they started.

The proverbial final straw comes just after 11, when the bedroom door crashes unexpectedly open, the thumping music from the living room overflowing into Rey’s workspace just ahead of its authors, who follow, giggling, behind it.

“Reybie!” Rose Tico crows the diminutive with an unearned familiarity, flinging her arms out the suggestion of an air-hug as she stumbles into their shared room. “I, like, thought you were hiding away in here!”

Behind Rose, Jannah and Kaydel stand, eyeing Rey’s side of the double, tittering like mice. Kaydel’s hair has already begun to wilt, her spherical buns drooping as her shoulders shake with contained laughter. An undignified snort escapes her as Jannah leans close, glossy lipsticked mouth whispering something behind her thin fingers.

Rey’s frown, which has been sitting uncomfortably on her mouth for the past hour, deepens. _It’s no matter,_ Grandfather would say. _No matter at all, what losers think of winners._

Rey sniffs, straightening her spine as she addresses her intruders. “You knew I was working,” she says, letting her eyes flick back to her own roommate: slouched posture as she plops down on her de-lofted bed, the glazed look in her eyes as she struggles to focus on something she’s typing on her phone. “You’re drunk.”

Rose laughs, full-bellied, and kicks her wedge sandals onto her Target-bought rug to tuck her feet on her comforter. Her mini-skirt rides up her thigh as she crosses her legs. “Astute observation, Mr. Watson.”

“Doctor,” Rey corrects, a muscle in her eyelid twitching at the red cup Rose has left carelessly on the floor, a spill waiting to happen. “Well, if that’s all you needed me to see—”

“We came in to see if you wanted to come out with us,” Jannah says, turning her attention away from the medals lining the wall beside Rey’s desk to address her directly. Her voice is an octave higher than usual, her curly hair bouncing in place as she speaks. “ZBT is having a party—”

“Wait, is that the Jewish frat?” Kaydel cuts in, swaying slightly on her teetering pink heels as she tips into the room like a knocked-over glass. Her manicured fingers graze against the wall, knocking blue ribbons out of place. She leans over Rey’s shoulder, hot vodka-breath ghosting over Rey’s translations, knobby fingers picking at Rey’s neatly organized colored pens, oblivious to every and all muttered pejoratives. “Or am I thinking of AEPi—”

“It’s both of them—”

“So do you want to come, Rey?” Rose grins, big, soft, pink cheeks lifting in happiness. Rey clenches her jaw as she turns back to her books, doing her best to ignore the noise behind her, hoping foolishly it’ll go away by itself. “It’s gonna be, like, super fun, and Kay says there’s gonna be, like, a ton of guys there—”

“Poe for sure,” Kay speaks around a swallow of barely-mixed drink, gulping, “and he’s bringing Snap and Ben and maybe Hux—”

“—and Rose wants Finn to be there,” Jannah interjects, voice muffled, probably into her solo cup.

“And it’s gonna be, like, a ton of fun,” Rose tells the back of Rey’s head, “and so you should, like, _definitely_ come—”

“Oh, should I?” Rey exclaims, slapping her hands down on her desk, knocking her pens off the edge. Her voice pitches horribly high, ticking up on the end of every single word. “Should I, _like_ , totally, _like_ , definitely, _like_ , come?”

The room goes quiet so quickly it’s hard to imagine there was sound ever in it. Rey lets out an annoyed breath as she stretches to pick up her pens, gently lining them up into place the way they were before the interruption.

Distracted as she is, it takes her a long moment to notice the sets of eyes burning holes into the back of her head. Not until she spins around to face the other girls, each of them standing behind her silent and tense.

Jannah and Kaydel glare, expressions dripping with judgment, lean forearms folded over shimmering party dresses like Rey has never owned. Rose, barefoot on her fuzzy white rug, looks as if Rey had slapped her across the face.

Ignoring the horrible ribbon of regret curling, congregating into a lump in her stomach, Rey narrows her eyes, voice clipped and harsh. “ _What_?”

An ugly scoff draws Rey’s attention, tugging her eyes from Rose to her other suitemate.

Kaydel sneers, pink-painted lips pulling back from perfect teeth. “What the fuck is your problem?”

The lump grows. It takes her two tries to say, “I have _work_ to do.”

Jannah’s brown eyes roll. She shakes her head, gold hoops swinging with the motion, and hustles Kaydel out of bedroom, dragging her by the elbow to the doorway. “Just forget it,” she mutters. It’s impossible to ascertain who she’s speaking to.

Rose leaves last. Slowly, overly-precise, she toes her sandals back on, gaining three inches in one fell swoop. Blank-eyed, she plasters a smile across her face. “Have fun studying,” she offers, garishly bright.

Then, just as quickly as she came, Rose is gone, too.

With a huff, Rey turns back to Fagles. Her lips purse, working at nothing as she attempts to concentrate once again. The music from the common area cuts out a few minutes later; the suite door opens, slams shut.

She is finally, blissfully alone.

Yet—still—

Her book is banged closed, colored pens gathered into one hostile fist. Rey rips her forest green sweater off the back of her chair, forcing it down over her hair, uncaring of how the static frizzes it into a halo around her head.

She won’t get any work done here tonight. And college is, after all, about _independence_ . Going _where_ she wants, _whenever_ she wants, for _as long as_ she wants.

A satisfied sort of smile lights onto her face as she makes the decision.

She’ll study at the _library_ tonight.

_But the sequences of letters already spoken may not be changed_

Soused.

Ben is absolutely, thoroughly, immutably _soused_.

As with most mistakes he’s made so far this semester, and in his life in general, it is the fault of two people: Poe Dameron and Rey Palpatine.

Early that evening, in the midst of a Five Hour Energy crash and searching, without hope, for something to get his mind off of his childhood nemesis and what, exactly, he is supposed to do about her continued (and _insufferable_ ) presence in his reality, Ben had called Poe. A distraction, that’s all he needed. A good, simple, easy distraction.

And, like always, Poe had one.

Which is how Ben finds himself in the densely packed foyer of the ZBT house, laminate floor sticky under his Allbirds, making uncomfortable, tipsy small talk with three of his own residents, each of them pretending steadfastly that none of them has had a drop to drink.

If Ben were a better RA, he’s sure, he’d do something about that. He’s twenty-one, sure, but it’s not like he only started drinking when it was legal. Besides: Poe says if he turns in Rose Tico and Kaydel Ko Connix and his kind-of-cousin Jannah, Ben will have to fill in paperwork.

Which honestly sounds like too much effort for a Friday night.

So instead, Ben feigns ignorance about the reason for Kaydel’s slurred speech and Jannah’s insensible leaps of logic about Biomedical Engineering as she talks to Poe and Rose’s apparent inability to hold her head up straight. Complicated, he thinks. Far too complicated to confront reality at a ZBT party. Much easier to stick to his jittery caffeine high and nail polish remover drink and add nothing to the atmosphere besides the occasional, _Oh, really?_

He’s distracted, too. Maybe more than his buzzed (he may be buzzed now; it’s fine) brain wants to admit. Because there are three girls sticking together—watching each other’s drinks and making evil eyes at any rowdy frat boys that come too close and jostling unwelcome circle-crashers back out into the swarm of the house party with little more than mocking girl-laughter and well-timed hip checks—and one is conspicuously and suspiciously missing in action. 

“Where’s Rey Palpatine?”

The question—asked loudly, out of the blue, perhaps slightly too clumsily, and for absolutely no reason that Ben wants to identify—sets off a minor conversational explosion. 

“Oh,” Kaydel Ko Connix announces, mien screwing up in patent irritation, “that fucking bi—”

“Kay, you cannot just go around calling other women _bitches—_ ” Jannah is shaking her head, her whole body swaying with the movement, nudging the elbow Ben is using to hold his drink in the process, spilling the jungle juice he’s carrying over the cuff of his shirt sleeve.

He hisses, struggling for something to wipe his arm off with while the sticky concoction slides down to the crook of his elbow, clinging to his arm hair. Poe is no help—he’s crossed, and obnoxious, and absolutely useless in both the conversation and in this particular crisis—and his giggle-snort of a laugh hitches high when Ben swears colorfully. Ben has to settle for rolling his sleeves up, trying to mitigate the worst of the spill.

None of the roommates so much as look in their direction, distracted by each other. 

“Why is she so _rude_ ? _Rose_ ,” Kay reaches out, smacking her arm against the shorter girl’s shoulder. Rose squeaks as her attention is pulled from the guy she's clearly pining over across the room, searching wildly for the source of the whack, “Rose, how do you put up with _her_ every day—”

Rose groans, eyes raising obviously to the ceiling, “God, Kay, I do _not_ want to talk about it—”

“So rude, she’s so _mean_ and _weird_ and _rude—_ ”

“Who are we talking about?” Poe says too loudly, five minutes behind everyone else. 

“My roommate,” Rose spits out, sweet round face tempered with rage Ben could’ve never imagined on someone as nice-seeming as her, “Rey Palpatine, Little Miss Queen of the Bee—”

“Who’s that?” Poe asks, and Ben has never hated his friend more than in this moment. If only he were high too, but the last time he’d tried to get crossfaded he had thrown up and panicked for an hour in the bathroom about his GPA.

“The Spelling Bee,” Jannah slurs, “she won the Spelling Bee or something—”

“Just like Keke Palmer!”

“Literally _nothing_ like Keke Palmer, Kay—”

“Hey,” Poe draws the word out impossibly long, smiling wide and lazy, “Ben almost won the Spelling Bee—”

“Shut up,” Ben grits out, ignoring Poe’s yelp of indignation as Ben shoves his heel into the toe of Poe’s Air Jordans. 

“She’s giant,” Rose has to shout it over the thump of music, her voice almost lost in the ambient noise as a frat guy accidentally knocks into her side, “like, _tall_ -giant, like an amazon, and she, like, does _not_ know how to dress, and she’s always studying because she thinks she’s, like, _better_ than everyone—”

Kaydel scoffs into her solo cup, “Probably at the library right now—”

“That sounds really familiar,” Poe muses, voice pitched as high as he is, contemplative, “I feel like I know exactly who you’re talking about—”

“You haven’t met her,” Ben bites out, and what possessed him to bring up Rey Palpatine? Was he spoiling for something to ruin his night? What the fuck is _wrong_ with him? _Pathological_ is what he is. Pathologically incapable of accepting reality, of moving the fuck _on._

He _perseverates_ . That’s what she told him once. _Per-sev-er-ate_. Origin: Latin. Greek? Latin.

Fucking _Latin._

“Is she hot?”

Jannah cackles harshly, “Yeah, but it’s not like she knows what to do with it.”

“Ben,” Poe crows, almost bouncing off the wall with excitement, “doesn’t that sound just like that girl you were—” he snaps his fingers, as if struggling to place the memory, “during move-in, remember?”

“I need to go home,” Ben announces apropos of nothing, and he promptly turns on his heel to find his way out of the crowd-crush.

On his way, someone bumps into his back, knocking his drink down the front of his shirt, knocking his glasses entirely off his face. Too quick for him to react, his glasses are, all at once, kicked away, stomped, and crushed by a jabbering horde of sorority girls.

Ben blinks, his vision blurred, a pungent alcohol smell permeating his clothes.

Someone else smacks into his upper arm, pinwheeling around his stunned frame with a _fuck out of the way, sasquatch._

Ben's hands close into fists. He can’t see a god damn thing.

“ _Fuck,_ ” he says.

And, then, one more time, with _feeling_.

_I hate to come in second_

It’s after 1 a.m. when Rey emerges from Plagueis Library, yawning, rubbing the hollows of her eyes. Flouting her own inner-workings to stay awake. She’s in college now, albeit a second-rate one; surely, she doesn’t need to get the recommended eight hours every single night. And it's a Friday after all—what Grandfather doesn’t know won’t cause him any chagrin.

Spine bent under the weight of her textbooks, gaze trained on the footpath that will take her back to Kenobi, her incongruously bright Keds swallowing the length of the library lawn in double-time—she’s on campus, and there are blue lights everywhere, and of course it’s safe, _of course_ it is, but it’s still after midnight and maybe she won’t stay out so late in the future—Rey hardly even notices who’s in her way until she’s practically on top of him.

“ _Oh,_ ” Rey stumbles backward to avoid making a direct collision, a ridiculous little scream of surprise escaping her before she can reel it in, “Christ, what is—” her throat clears, brow furrowing in annoyance, “why are you just _standing_ here— _oh—_ ”

Oh.

 _Oh,_ because the blockade is bigger than she initially calculated. _Oh,_ because the blockade is a man, one who reeks of alcohol and, underneath that, something terribly warm, some kind of boy smell she still isn’t quite accustomed to experiencing in such intense definition. _Oh,_ and _oh,_ and _oh,_ because her neck is craning back to make eye contact with—

“Benjamin?” she squeaks. Blinks up at him, feeling quite suddenly doe-eyed and small.

And then straightens her back and clears her throat because Rey Palpatine does not _squeak_ or...or _bat her eyes_ like Bambi at a tall boy-enemy glaring down at her with enough venom to kill a small horse.

“Jesus fuck,” he hisses, dropping the hand holding his phone—which looks minuscule in his bear-paw grip, _jeez louise_ — “what the hell are you doing out here?”

“I—I—” _Do not stammer, dear, that’s how spellers lose, and you don’t want to be a—_ “I was _studying,_ Benjamin. At the _library_.” She sniffs, haughty, and sidesteps his unmoving form rather neatly. “Unlike you, it seems.”

Elephant footsteps pound the pavement behind her. Rey does not break her laser-focus on her journey back to her dorm ( _their_ dorm); she keeps walking, staring straight ahead as Benjamin huffs beside her, long-legged loping easily catching up with her quicker, shorter strides.

“Studying? On a Friday night? Color me astonished.”

“Sarcasm is a poor substitute for cleverness. Why are you walking with me?” She runs her sentences together, half-breathless. The hill is steeper than she thought; she can feel her blood rushing to her cheeks, making her feel faintly dizzy.

Benjamin lets out a peculiar choking noise. “First of all,” he sputters, “I am not walking _with_ you, we are going in the same direction. _Second_ of all, if I leave you behind and you get murdered, there’s probably a lot of work I’ll have to do to get that sorted out. Third of all—”

His monologue slices down the middle. He hesitates.

Rey inclines her head in his direction, sneaking a wayward glance. Something about him seems...different, even aside from his intoxication. Under the yellow lamplights dotting the footpath, his hair looks like raven feathers, shiny and black. High, aristocratic cheekbones cast arresting shadows across the plane of his face. His lips, full and distractingly pretty, pout.

_Pretty?_

She forces her attention forward again, cheeks heating further. “Do you have a third point?”

His generous mouth ticks down into a scowl. “I’m not walking _with_ you,” he repeats, petulant.

Her fingers tighten around the straps of her JanSport. She grinds out, “You don’t have to convince me, Benjamin.”

They fall into a silence as they continue on, side by side. Not walking together; their hands don’t brush, even with Benjamin swinging his stupidly long and muscular arms all over the place. He stumbles into her, just barely, when the path curves sharply on their approach to the dorm. The moment he recognizes his mistake, he veers away again, overcorrecting directly into a lamp pole.

A mortifying giggle escapes her before she can stop it. She blanches, pressing her fingers to her lips to cut the sound off before he can notice and make fun. But Benjamin only curses, rubbing his forehead, and joins her back on the sidewalk, making no mention of any humiliating sounds he may or may not have heard.

Rey decides not to examine why she waited for him to recover rather than taking the last few steps of their journey alone.

In the lobby, after showing their student IDs to the guard keeping exceedingly casual watch of the entrance, the quiet lingers. The warmth in her cheeks from the vigorous exercise of the last ten minutes seems to be spreading, flushing across her face, down to her chest. She feels awfully hot, fidgeting with her nails. Picking at the tops until she can peel away the border. A dreadful habit. She should really work on that.

The elevator dings as it opens. They enter at the same time, Benjamin apparently entirely unconcerned about doorway etiquette; their shoulders brush, but only because his are so staggeringly _wide_ and _absurd_ . What is the point of shoulders like that? He used to be so _skinny_ , rail-thin and uncomfortable in his own body, acne-covered and poor-postured and bespectacled and—

“Your glasses,” she blurts out, realizing the reason for his altered appearance just as they are locked in together. “You’re missing your glasses.”

He grunts. “Lost them.”

Her jaw drops. She whirls to face him, backpack swinging. The space is too small for it. The elevator is achingly slow, too; they haven’t even reached the second floor yet, and Rey is on the fourth. He on the fifth. “That was irresponsible, Benjamin. You lost your glasses only two weeks into the year!”

“Why does that matter to you?” He seems even bigger in his irritation, staring down at her like he’s waiting for this particular look to kill. “Who the fuck are you anyway?”

“I’m Rey _fucking_ Palpatine,” she barely registers how she arches onto her tiptoes to spit the words into his face, her heartbeat quickening irrational and dumb, “and you should stop pretending like you don’t know me. Like I don’t know _you_.”

“You _don’t_ know me,” he hisses. “You know _nothing_ about me.”

“I know who your family is,” she throws out. “I know all of the extra classes you took to get where you did. I know every single one of your tells.” Her jaw aches from clenching. She doesn’t even notice how his big, big body is crowding her against the wall until she hits it, effectively and efficiently cornered. But she can’t stop. _Losers_ quit, _losers_ stop, and Rey Palpatine is not a fucking _loser_ . “That’s not _nothing_ . I’m _not_ nothing, _you_ are, and stop pretending otherwise! _You’re_ nothing, _I_ won and _you_ lost, you fucking _lost_ , Benjamin—”

His hand slams into the wall beside her head. The metal clangs around them, and Rey falls silent, lips popping open as he leans into her space, elbow bending into her, his nose inches from her nose. Mouth inches from her mouth.

His voice darkens, sonorous. His muscled forearm grazes the juncture between her neck and shoulder. Skin to skin. “Stop. Calling me. _Benjamin_.”

Her breath rips sharply through her lungs. Her eyes stay wide as his gaze drifts down, pupils blown, forcing out the amber. “What am I supposed to call you?” she breathes. 

A pink tongue darts out to lick his chapped lips. Rey’s palms press against the wall behind her. Fingers curling, the tips sliding on cool metal. Her thighs squeeze together, stomach swooping.

“It’s just Ben,” he says.

Her head nods of its own volition, a strand of hair catching on her open, wet mouth. “Ben,” she manages finally. Hardly a whisper. Small and stupid and doe-eyed.

His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat. He sucks in a breath through his teeth, broad chest expanding even broader.

A long moment catches between them. Arcs, parabolically. Dangles in midair.

And ends, swiftly, when the elevator churns to a halt, the door creaking open.

Rey moves as quickly as she can, ducking under his arm to get to the exit, her blood pounding erratically in her ears, the pit of her stomach tightening and swirling in confusing directions.

She doesn’t turn around to see the door close.

Barging into her suite, Rey drops her backpack carelessly by the entrance, toes off her tennis shoes beside it. It’s the work of a moment to pull her sweater off over her head and drop it on the common room couch. Why did she even wear that? The forecast said it was 60 degrees and chilly, but it feels absolutely _boiling_. Her skin is about to melt off her bones.

For a minute, she paces the length of the room, heading neither to her bedroom nor to the hall. Her eyes screw shut, and all she sees is him, Benjamin— _Ben_ . Imperfect teeth and too-many moles and patchy five o’clock shadow, her view of his eyes unmarred without his glasses, and how _dark_ they seemed, draping across her body, and his voice easing into the air between them, scraping hoarse and low, and oh god, what is the _matter_ with her? Why did he stand so close to her, near enough that she could feel his body heat radiating into her, feel his breath brushing gently over her lips—

A chorus of voices interrupts her jumbled musings, loud bursts of laughter and unintelligible squawks of conversation bumping up from outside.

Rey barely manages to make it into the shared bathroom before the others pour inside the suite, filling up the space with trivial, babbling yammering. She locks the door behind her, ignoring the trembling in her fingers, and stalks to the mirror.

Her hair is a mess. Frizzed and floating beside her head, resistant to how she smooths it down frantically. Her skin, normally nicely tanned, is flushed bright pink, her freckles even more obvious with the change in color. The blush sweeps down to her collarbones, dipping under the neckline of her t-shirt.

And her _eyes_ —

Her hands clutch the edges of the sink until her knuckles ache.

Entirely oblivious to anything out of the ordinary, the other girls continue to prattle on in the living room.

Rey hurriedly strips out of the rest of her clothes, down to a plain white cotton bra and underwear set, utilitarian in comfort and function. Next is her towel—she is doing laundry tomorrow anyway, she justifies, almost frenzied. She lays it down on the cold, hard tile, kneeling on top to keep her skin off the disgusting floor. And then her spare towel, piled in a ball on top of it, pushed between her quavering thighs as she sits. Bunched up until it hits just right.

She rocks slowly, back and forth. Back and forth. Graceless hands shove the cups of her bra down to bare her nipples, pinching them between her fingers until it almost hurts. Gasping, knees aching as she pushes herself to orgasm, whimpers scratching from her vocal chords before she can think to stop them. She closes her eyes so she can picture it better: his cruel gaze on her and his plush lips parting and his forearm skimming the sensitive skin of her throat.

She mouths his name when she comes. But she doesn't make a sound.

It can't count against her until she makes a sound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i made a deal w/ god that all of my fics have to have a masturbation scene in chapter 2 apparently


End file.
